COINTELPRO 2.0
Tom Burghardt
Antifascist Calling…
August 21, 2008
The waning months of the Bush administration can be characterized by an avalanche of changes
to long-standing rules governing domestic intelligence operations.
Despite posturing by leading Democrats, including the party’s presumptive presidential nominee,
Sen. Barack Obama, the FISA legislation legalized the Bush administration’s warrantless
wiretapping program and set the stage for further assaults on the right to privacy and dissent.
The revisions proposed by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and other top administration
officials, represent the greatest expansion of executive power since the Watergate era and should
been viewed as an imminent threat to already-diminished civil liberties protections in the United
States.
The slippery slope towards open police state methods of governance may have begun with the
2001 passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, but recent events signal that a qualitative acceleration
of repressive measures are currently underway. These changes are slated to go into effect with
the new fiscal year beginning October 1, and are subject neither to congressional oversight nor
judicial review.
Bush allies in Congress kicked-off the summer with the shameful passage by the House and
Senate of the FISA Amendments Act, an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that gutted Fourth
Amendment protections. With broad consensus by both capitalist political parties, the FISA Act
eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of state surveillance while granting virtual immunity to
law-breaking telecoms.
Despite posturing by leading Democrats, including the party’s presumptive presidential nominee,
Sen. Barack Obama, the FISA legislation legalized the Bush administration’s warrantless
wiretapping program and set the stage for further assaults on the right to privacy and dissent.
Further attacks were not long in coming.
In the last month alone, mainstream media have reported that the FBI illegally obtained the
phone records of overseas journalists allegedly as part of a 2004 "terrorism investigation."
Other reports documented how the Department of Homeland Security asserts the right to seize a
traveler’s laptop and other electronic devices for an unspecified period of time and without
probable cause.
Still other reports revealed that the administration has expanded the power of the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to issue "overarching policies and procedures" and to
coordinate "priorities" with foreign intelligence services that target American citizens and legal
residents.
And on Wednesday, The Washington Post exposed how the federal government has used "its
system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by
collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for
15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations." Ellen Nakashima writes,
The disclosure of the database is among a series of notices, officials say, to make DHS’s data
gathering more transparent. Critics say the moves exemplify efforts by the Bush administration
in its final months to cement an unprecedented expansion of data gathering for national security
and intelligence purposes. ("Citizens’ U.S. Border Crossings Tracked," The Washington Post,
August 20, 2008)
The Post also revealed that the information will be linked to a new database, the Non-Federal
Entity Data System, "which is being set up to hold personal information about all drivers in a
state’s database." Posted at the Government Printing Office’s website, the notice states that the
information may even be shared with federal contractors or consultants "to accomplish an agency
function related to this system of records."
But perhaps the most controversial move towards increasing the federal government’s
surveillance powers were unveiled by the Justice Department in late July. According to The
Washington Post, "a new domestic spying measure…would make it easier for state and local
police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and
retain it for at least 10 years."
New rules for police intelligence-gathering would apply to any of the 18,000 state and local
police agencies that receive some $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. These proposed
changes, as with other administration measures, were quietly published July 31 in the Federal
Register.
The McClatchy Washington Bureau reported August 13, that Mukasey confirmed plans to
"loosen post-Watergate restrictions on the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations,"
under cover of improving the Bureau’s "ability to detect terrorists." Marisa Taylor wrote,
Mukasey said he expected criticism of the new rules because "they expressly authorize the FBI
to engage in intelligence collection inside the United States." However, he said the criticism
would be misplaced because the bureau has long had authority to do so.
Mukasey said the new rules "remove unnecessary barriers" to cooperation between law
enforcement agencies and "eliminate the artificial distinctions" in the way agents conduct
surveillance in criminal and national security investigations. ("FBI to Get Freer Rein to Look for
Terrorism Suspects," McClatchy Washington Bureau, August 13, 2008)
While the Justice Department’s draft proposals have been selectively leaked to the media, and
DoJ is expected to release its final version of the changes within a few weeks, even then the bulk
of these modifications will remain classified on grounds of "national security."
Under the new regulatory regime proposed by Mukasey, state and local police would be given
free rein to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch criminal intelligence investigations
based on the "suspicion" that a target is "engaged in terrorism." The results of such investigations
could be shared "with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and
others in many cases," according to Post reporters Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson.
With probable cause tossed overboard, domestic intelligence as envisaged by the Bush Justice
Department is little more than a fishing expedition intended to cast a wide driftnet over
Americans’ constitutional rights, reducing guarantees of free speech and assembly to banal
pieties mouthed by state propagandists.
These changes are intended to lock-in Bush regime surveillance programs such as warrantless
internet and phone wiretapping, data mining, the scattershot issuance of top secret National
Security Letters to seize financial and other personal records, as well as expanding a security
index of individuals deemed "terrorist threats" by the corporatist state.
Simultaneous with the release of new DoJ domestic spying guidelines, the Bush administration’s
"modernization" of Reagan-era Executive Order 12333, as The Washington Post delicately puts
it, also calls for intensified sharing of intelligence information with local law enforcement
agencies.
In addition to consolidating power within the ODNI, E.O. 12333 revisions direct the CIA "and
other spy agencies," in a clear violation of the Agency’s charter, to "provide specialized
equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel" to state and local authorities.
The latest moves to expand executive power follow close on the heels of other orders and rule
changes issued by the Bush regime. As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky reported in
June, the Orwellian National Security Presidential Directive 59/Homeland Security Presidential
Directive 24 (NSPD 59/HSPD 24), entitled "Biometrics for Identification and Screening to
Enhance National Security," is directed against U.S. citizens. Chossudovsky wrote,
NSPD 59 goes far beyond the issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and
storage of "associated biographic" information, meaning information on the private lives of US
citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be "accomplished within the law."
The directive uses 9/11 as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against
dissenting citizens, establishing at the same time an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across
the land.
It also calls for the integration of various data banks as well as inter-agency cooperation in the
sharing of information, with a view to eventually centralizing the information on American
citizens. ("Big Brother" Presidential Directive: "Biometrics for Identification and Screening to
Enhance National Security," Global Research, June 11, 2008)
Indeed, NSPD 59/HSPD 24 creates the framework for expanding the definition of who is a
"terrorist" to include other categories of individuals "who may pose a threat to national security."
In addition to al Qaeda and other far-right Islamist terror groups, many of whom have served as a
cat’s paw for Western intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the
Balkans, NSPD 59/HSPD 24 has identified two new categories of individuals as potential threats:
"Radical groups" and "disgruntled employees."
In other words, domestic anarchist and socialist organizations as well as labor unions acting on
behalf of their members’ rights, now officially fall under the panoptic lens of federal intelligence
agencies and the private security contractors who staff the 16 separate agencies that comprise the
U.S. "intelligence community."
These moves represent nothing less than an attempt by the Bush administration to return to the
days of COINTELPRO when the Bureau, acting in concert with state and local police "red
squads" targeted the left for destruction.
"After 9/11, the gloves come off"
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. national security state has ramped-up its repressive
machinery, targeting millions of Americans through broad surveillance programs across a
multitude of state and private intelligence agencies.
While the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) may be the federal "tip of the spear" of current intelligence operations, they
certainly are not alone when it comes to domestic spying.
Outsourced contractors from communications, defense and
security corporations such as AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton,
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Verizon Communications, Northrop Grumman, Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC), L-3 Communications, CACI International and many more,
have collaborated with Bush regime war criminals in fashioning a hypermodern, high-tech police
state.
That these corporations have staked-out "homeland security" as a niche market to expand their
operations has been explored by Antifascist Calling in numerous articles. As I have previously
reported, it is estimated that some 70% of the personnel employed by U.S. intelligence agencies
are now private contractors holding top secret and above security clearances.
Unaccountable actors virtually beyond congressional scrutiny, outsourced intelligence agents
first and foremost are employees answerable to corporate managers and boards of directors, not
the American people or their representatives. Chiefly concerned with inflating profit margins by
overselling the "terrorist threat," the incestuous relationships amongst corporate grifters and a
diminished "public sector" demonstrate the precarious state of democratic norms and institutions
in the U.S.
New rules governing FBI counterintelligence investigations will allow the Bureau to run
informants for the purpose of infiltrating organizations deemed "subversive" by federal snoops.
Many of the worst abuses under COINTELPRO, the CIA’s Operation CHAOS and the U.S.
Army’s deployment of Military Intelligence Groups (MIGs) for illegal domestic operations
during the 1960s, employed neofascists as infiltrators and as nascent death squads.
While the Bureau may have eschewed close collaboration with fascist gangs, will sophisticated,
high-tech private security corporations now play a similar role in Bureau counterintelligence and
domestic security operations?
If history is any judge, the answer inevitably will be "yes."
Currently equipping the "intelligence community" with electronic specialists, network managers,
software designers and analysts, will defense and security corporations bulk-up the Bureau and
related agencies with "plausibly deniable" ex-military and intelligence assets for targeted
infiltration and "disruption" of domestic antiwar and anticapitalist groups?
It can’t happen here? Why its happening already! As investigative journalist James Ridgeway
revealed in April, a private security firm,
organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other
environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from
trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting
phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company
documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit
collected confidential internal records–donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social
Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced
intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental
controversies. ("Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups,"
Mother Jones, April 11, 2008)
The firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i) provided a range of services for
corporate clients. According to Ridgeway, the private snoops engaged in "intelligence collection"
for Allied Waste; conducted background checks and "performed due diligence" for the Carlyle
Group; handled "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and Pirelli; engaged in
"information collection" for Wal-Mart. Also listed as BBI/S2i records as clients were Halliburton
and Monsanto.
Mike German, a former FBI agent and whistleblower who is now the policy counsel for the
American Civil Liberties Union, said that once proposed changes are implemented, police may
collect intelligence even when no underlying crime is suspected. This is nothing less than
"preemptive policing" and a recipe for tightening the screws on dissent. The Post averred,
German, an FBI agent for 16 years, said easing established limits on intelligence-gathering
would lead to abuses against peaceful political dissenters. In addition to the Maryland case [that
targeted antiwar and death penalty opponents], he pointed to reports in the past six years that
undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican
National Convention; that California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor
activists; and that Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being
discovered.
"If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from
criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be
encouraged to collect more information," German said. "It turns police officers into spies on
behalf of the federal government." (Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson, "U.S. May Ease Police
Spy Rules," The Washington Post, August 16, 2008)
In a related report on Fusion Centers, that German coauthored with Jay Staley for the ACLU,
they documented how so-called "counterterrorist" national collection agencies are "characterized
by ambiguous lines of authority, excessive secrecy, troubling private-sector and military
participation, and an apparent bent toward suspicionless information collection and data mining."
As I reported earlier this month, citing research from German and Staley’s report, U.S. Marine
Corps officers, enlisted personnel and an analyst with U.S. NORTHCOM, pilfered intelligence
files and shared them with private defense contractors in hope of securing future employment.
Money talks, particularly in a political culture where the business of government is, after all,
business!
With little oversight from a compliant Congress, and an "opposition" party in league with their
"constituents"–multinational corporate grifters out to make a buck–the final nails are being
hammered into the coffin of America’s former democratic Republic.
http://www.infowars.com/cointelpro-20/
The SF8, FBI Repression, and the Return of
COINTELPRO
Rick Gedeon
Activist Post
February 7, 2011
Richard Brown was falsely arrested and tells his decades-long story about his experience with
the FBI in the video below.
Lately, the FBI has been moving in to repress free speech, using grand jury indictments in a
revival of COINTELPRO measures begun in the ’50s against domestic political groups, and
most infamously against black civil rights activists in the ’60s. The modern form is even more
virulent, as it attempts to chill free speech by paralyzing all activists from participating in the
organized, peaceful protest they are entitled to under the Constitution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_zSsojzoxw&feature=player_embedded
Regardless of what one might think of The Black Panthers, or Brown’s former connection to
them, there are some striking facts about police brutality, FBI dininfo/misinfo campaigns,
activist surveillance, and justice system intimidation tactics that were fully realized in the
persecution of black civil rights activists such as The Black Panthers. Brown’s case is indicative
of the lengths to which the FBI went to torture people into false confessions, spread personal
rumors, provocateur violence, publish false stories, and infiltrate groups in order to conduct full-
time surveillance. Now, many of the very same agents (literally) involved in COINTELPRO
operations are back, having been deputized by Homeland Security to marshal in another round of
repressive conduct against Americans.
It has been thoroughly revealed that peaceful activism is now being connected to terrorism, thus
putting all activists under potential surveillance within the greater War on Terror. Additionally, it
has been announced that PATRIOT Act provisions are set to be made permanent, offering no
relief from the endless expansion of the security state and snitch culture endorsed by Homeland
Security. The government considers protesting as a form of terrorism, or “low level-terrorism” as
they call it; protests are now juxtaposed with attacking the Pentagon, IEDs (Improvised
Explosive Devices), and hate crimes against racial groups (I wonder if the Afghan/Iraq war falls
under this definition).
Such contempt for free speech should be no surprise; from the Bush-era free speech zones to the
JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) conducting house visits and interrogations on individuals
deemed “radicals” or “extremist” based on “call-ins” — euphemism for snitch-based information
obtained from illegal infiltration. It should be no surprise to have watched the YouTube video
posted by an Austin-area nurse and mother of five who received a visit from two JTTF agents.
Participation at a Palestine peace protest warranted that dreaded knock on the door. Even
respected veterans such as members of IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) who have
actively participated in anti-war events have experienced FBI harassment. This treatment is
documented by Camilo Mejia — previously the Chair of Board of Directors of the Iraq Veterans
Against the War – in IVAW’s latest book Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness
Accounts of the Occupations.
So, listen to Brown’s story carefully. If you believe in your right to free speech and non-violent
rebellion, this story could soon be your own if we don’t take steps to expose this new phase of
government over-reach and their police state tactics of oppression. I encourage you to take action
now by getting involved with The Committee to Stop FBI Repression.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
Other sources for this story:
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs02082007.html
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro.php
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/07/06/plotting-terrorism/
This article was posted: Monday, February 7, 2011 at 5:44 am
http://www.infowars.com/the-sf8-fbi-repression-and-the-return-of-cointelpro/
COINTELPRO Déjà Vu: FBI Recruits
Informers for the RNC
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
May 22, 2008
In a way, you have to feel for Paul Carroll. Not because he was busted for the minor crime of
spray-painting the interior of a campus elevator. But for what happened to him after he was
charged with a gross misdemeanor. As Matt Snyders, writing for City Pages, tells it Carroll was
asked to meet with an FBI agent in a local coffee shop. Carroll, not the vandal’s real name, was
offered an assignment by FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola, apparently her real name: to
work as an informant.
For me, Carroll’s story serves up a large dose of déjà vu, taking me momentarily back to the
early 1970s when the FBI, under COINTELPRO, did this sort of stuff on a regular basis. As an
antiwar activist, I witnessed a lot of this as Nixon, the FBI, the CIA, and military intelligence
attempted to “neutralize,” as the FBI liked to call it, people exercising their First Amendment
right to petition the government.
Back in the day, as you may likely assume, such petitioning concerned the war in Vietnam, in
particular Nixon’s attack into Cambodia, which he announced on April 30, 1970. A year later, a
“Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI” removed secret files from an FBI office in Media,
Pennsylvania, and released them to the press. In short order we learned about the FBI’s dirty
tricks, including infiltration of political groups, psychological warfare against targeted activists,
harassment through the legal system, and even “extralegal” violence directed at dissidents,
especially the Black Panthers, members of the American Indian Movement, and Puerto Rican
activists. In dealing with the latter folks, nothing was out of the ordinary, including assassination.
For instance, on December 3, 1969, Fred Hampton of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther
Party was drugged by the FBI and then assassinated by the Chicago cops.
After the Citizens Committee spilled the beans on the FBI, the Church Committee was
empaneled and after hearings and a published report we were told the FBI had reformed and the
FBI had dismantled COINTELRPO a couple years before, in 1971. As members of the Church
Committee discovered, under COINTELPRO’s “key activist” program, specific antiwar activists
were put under “intensive investigation,” that is to say they were to be “neutralized,” not for
specific or prosecutable criminal acts but because they opposed the Vietnam War.
“Neutralization, as explained on record by the FBI, doesn’t necessarily pertain to the
apprehension of parties in the commission of a crime, the preparation of evidence against them,
and securing of a judicial conviction, but rather to simply making them incapable of engaging in
political activity by whatever means,” writes Paul Wolf.
Soon enough, though, the FBI would not need lurk around in the dark in order to betray the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. On December 4, 1981, Ronald Reagan signed Executive
Order 12333, essentially legalizing COINTELPRO.
According to Ross Gelbspan in his book Break-Ins, Death Threats And The FBI, activists who
opposed U.S. policy in Central America “experienced nearly 200 incidents of harassment and
intimidation, many involving… break-ins and thefts or rifling of files.” Gelbspan is not a tinfoil
hat conspiracy theorist. He utilized thousands of pages of FBI documents secured through the
Freedom of Information Act. In particular, according to a former FBI informant, Frank Varelli,
the FBI went after CISPES, or the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. The
FBI found it “imperative to formulate some plan of attack against CISPES,” not because of its
suspected involvement in terrorism or criminal activity, but because of its association with
“individuals [deleted] who defiantly display their contempt for the U.S. government by making
speeches and propagandizing their cause,” in other words individuals who dared exercise their
First Amendment right.
And then, in the 1990s, there was “Operation Thermcon” (“Thermite Conspiracy”) against
environmental activists, specifically Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, victims of a car bombing
allegedly pulled off by the FBI. “My own knowledge is that the FBI along with other Federal law
enforcement agencies has been involved in a campaign of bombing, arson and terrorism in order
to create in the mass public mind a connection between political dissidence of whatever stripe
and revolutionaries of whatever violent tendencies,” former FBI agent provocateur David Sannes
told WBAI radio.
That was then, this is now. Now we live in the wake of September 11, 2001, and a lot of people
expect the government to go after terrorists, even American terrorists opposed to the invasion
and occupation of Iraq. Of course, this makes sense, as there really is a dire shortage of Muslim
terrorists lurking in the shadows here in America, and besides, first and foremost the FBI has
served since its inception as a political police for the government, assigned to take down
opponents. In fact, when the Justice Department created the Bureau of Investigation of its
General Intelligence Division in 1919, headed up by a young and ambitious J. Edgar Hoover, one
of its first assignments was to go after anarchists and “radical leftists.” This assignment was
known as the Palmer Raids, named after Alexander Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson’s AG.
Ever since, the FBI has served as a political police. In the intervening years the CIA and military
intelligence have piled on.
So this brings us back to Paul Carroll and FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. “She told me
that I had the perfect ‘look,’” Carroll told Snyders of City Pages. “And that I had the perfect
personality — they kept saying I was friendly and personable — for what they were looking for.”
And what precisely was the FBI looking for? “What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an
informant — someone to show up at ‘vegan potlucks’ throughout the Twin Cities and rub
shoulders with RNC protesters, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back
to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and
state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis
division’s website, is to ‘investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which
fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney
General Guidelines,’” guidelines obviously at odds with the Constitution, specifically the
following, set out in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law … abridging … the
right of the people … to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” you know,
grievances such as the government invading small helpless countries and killing hundreds of
thousands if not millions of people.
Considering all of this, it is perfectly rational to assume there are “perfect look” informers and,
for lack of a better word “neutralizers,” in the antiwar, patriot, and 9/11 truth movements, people
unable or unwilling to turn down the likes of FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola and the
FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, as did Mr. Carroll, or whatever his real name is. On occasion,
such people rise to the surface and reveal themselves, as a certain provocateur does every time
We Are Change visits Ground Zero in New York. In fact, it appears, at least within the ranks of
the patriot and 9/11 movements, there is no shortage of “neutralizers,” informers, provocateurs,
and disinfo agents. As the above instance reveals, the FBI is actively attempting to recruit people
to discredit and even tag as terrorists demonstrators at the RNC.
Of course, the same is underway in regard to the Democrat convention in Denver, Colorado. It’s
called “Recreate 68″ and promises to rival the bloody 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago
and the so-called “Days of Rage.” It may well do so, and thus discredit the larger antiwar
movement, as the SDS and other infiltrated, compromised, and commandeered groups did in the
1960s and 70s at the behest of the government.
For as Paul Carroll’s story sadly reveals, some things never change.
Alex Jones LIVE, A Fourth Hour Now Added To The Infowars Radio Show For Members
Click here to get your subscription today!
This article was posted: Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 9:17 pm
http://www.infowars.com/cointelpro-deja-vu-fbi-recruits-informers-for-the-rnc/
Is Nico Haupt a COINTELPRO Operative?
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
May 6, 2008
Is it possible Nico Haupt works for the government as a COINTELPRO operative, tasked with
threatening members of the 9/11 truth movement? Or is he simply a violently insane crank?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tRj-S-Ktm5Y
As the video here demonstrates, Haupt, who claims to have created and organized just about
every faction of the 9/11 truth movement — see his rambling and disjointed Wikipedia entry —
has gone out of his way to assault We Are Change members at Ground Zero in New York, an
offense he should have been arrested for but the police refused to do, lending credence to the
theory he works for the police, the FBI, the CIA, military intelligence, or any combination
thereof. Either that or the cops on duty on Manhattan are awfully lazy.
As Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change notes, Haupt made a point of carrying a “We Did It”
placard on the day after an unknown person or persons lit off a small bomb outside a military
recruiting station in Times Square. “Letters claiming responsibility for the bombing of a military
recruiting station in New York’s Times Square arrived in the Washington offices of several
members of Congress,” CNN reported on March 6. The letter “contained a picture of a man
standing in front of the recruiting station with the statement ‘We did it,’ according to an e-mail
sent by the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and obtained by CNN.” Haupt,
explains Rudkowski, has accused We Are Change of undertaking the bombing and demands its
members be arrested.
This is a classic COINTELPRO operation, straight out the 1960s. In addition framing activists,
the FBI engaged in infiltration, harassment, intimidation, and violence. “Many of the FBI’s
strategies are familiar to Hollywood audiences: tapping phones, stealing files, and hiring spies to
infiltrate groups,” write C. McLaren & Brian Bolning. “But by far its most creative tactic was
creating ‘black propaganda’ — that is, propaganda that disguises its source. Faked dirty letters,
poems, and satirical comic books were among the FBI’s many devices for pitting activists
against one another.” In the case of Haupt and his followers — more accurately described as
useful idiots — this black propaganda has taken on the form of “9/11 TV fakery” (sic) and space
beams, designed to make serious 9/11 truth activists and researchers out to be raving lunatics
donning tinfoil hats.
As Paul Joseph Watson wrote on April 22 for Prison Planet, the “attempt to link We Are Change
with the Times Square incident came just days after Neo-Con talking heads like Geraldo Rivera,
who was bullhorned by Alex Jones and We Are Change last September in New York, had raised
that same talking point on Fox News.” Over the last few months, the corporate media has led a
campaign — notably led by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough, Geraldo Rivera, and
others — to discredit, vilify, and even accuse of being violent and dangerous the 9/11 truth
movement, in particular We Are Change, a group that espouses a non-violent Gandhi philosophy.
All of this came to a head when Gary Talis of We Are Truth was assaulted by a Bush supporter
outside of a Laura and Jenna Bush event, for which Talis was arrested and the neocon controlled
New York Post immediately followed up with a dishonest and slanderous article accusing Talis
of assaulting a teenage girl in a wheelchair.
Is it possible Haupt’s assault, taunting, and obscenities are part of an orchestrated campaign to
discredit We Are Change in particular and the 9/11 truth movement as a whole? Or is the
German immigrant simply insane? Considering the action of the police, or rather lack of action
— as documented above — the former is likely, as the government has a lot to fear as 9/11 truth
gains momentum and members of We Are Truth continue to confront and out politicians and
crime syndicate principles, not only for the crimes of September 11, 2001, but across the board,
from the crimes committed in Iraq to the crimes committed by the likes of David Rockefeller,
Bill Clinton, Larry Silverstein, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
WATCH ALEX JONES’ ENDGAME ONLINE NOW in its entirety. View more High quality
trailers at www.endgamethemovie.com
This article was posted: Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 6:09 pm
http://www.infowars.com/is-nico-haupt-a-cointelpro-operative-2/
Flashback: the New COINTELPRO
Camille T. Taiara
San Fransisco Bay Guardian
September 2, 2008
originally published October 22, 2004
Editor’s note: Considering the FBI’s involvement in coordinated attacks against organizations
demonstrating at the RNC this week — including raids on media centers and the arrest of
journalists — we re-post an article on the “October Plan,” published prior to the 2004 election.
Early this month the federal government launched the latest crude offensive in its so-called war
on terror. Titled the October Plan, the program called for “aggressive – even obvious –
surveillance” of a wide range of individuals (regardless of whether or not they’re suspected of
any criminal wrongdoing) until the Nov. 2 presidential election, according to an internal
document leaked to the press.
The plan – a collaboration between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, and other agencies – involves renewed scrutiny of mosques and
interrogations of people whose national origin, religious faith, or political leanings might, in the
eyes of the feds, indicate even the most far-flung relationship to “terrorism.”
Immigrants and others interviewed by the FBI have been “questioned about immigration status –
theirs and others’ – and about their political and religious views,” the National Lawyers Guild’s
Stacey Tolchin said at an emergency press conference called by the San Francisco branch of the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers,
the NLG, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
For staffers at these organizations, responding to these kinds of crackdowns has become
alarmingly routine. This is the fifth round of FBI “informal interviews” targeting immigrants
based on their national origin, religion, and, increasingly, their political views.
No one knows just how many have been deported as a result of the interviews or of the various
dragnets conducted over the past three years. Local NLG attorney Nancy Hormachae reported
that at least 13,000 people were forced into deportation hearings as the result of the notorious
Special Registration program alone. And the fact that none of these campaigns has proffered a
single al-Qaeda operative hasn’t deterred the Bush administration a bit.
So far, immigrant Muslims and those from the Middle East and Central Asia have suffered the
brunt of the Bush administration’s attacks on civil liberties. But as NLG immigration attorney
Mark Van Der Hout told me, “Going after immigrants is just the first step towards going after
U.S. citizens.”
Indeed, a look at the past three years shows that Attorney General John Ashcroft’s offensive has
widened to include a range of citizens whose only real crime is their opposition to the Bush
administration’s policies.
The FBI Comes Calling
President George W. Bush, Aschroft, and company have made it easier to spy on everyday
citizens without probable cause of criminal activity, even allowing for the indefinite detention of
Americans dubbed “enemy combatants,” without charges or access to a lawyer. They’ve
eviscerated laws meant to keep a wall between the CIA and the FBI and erected an extensive
domestic-spying infrastructure, enlisting private citizens and relying on private industry to a
degree never seen before. Today federal agencies are maintaining a grand total of 10 domestic
watch lists.
The Bush administration has shifted federal funding away from traditional law enforcement and
toward domestic spying, explained John Crew, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern
California specializing in police practices and surveillance issues. “A lot of this activity is, in fact,
being carried out by local police working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force,” he told me,
explaining that those agents are considered “federalized.” They report to the FBI. Local city
officials – even local police chiefs – are often not aware of what these “special officers” are
doing.
As the Bush administration loosened professional standards for law enforcement, it
simultaneously increased financial incentives for conducting surveillance, Crew continued. “To
qualify for grants, [local law enforcement] must have organizations in their locale that are
threats,” he said. “They have to justify their own budget by amplifying the threat factor.”
Here in San Francisco, the FBI was to assign 27 special agents – two with supervisory powers –
to the San Francisco Police Department, according to a November 2002 agreement between the
two agencies. The SFPD was to assign one investigator from its Intelligence Unit to coordinate
supervision of the special agents alongside the FBI’s two supervisory special agents.
“We usually don’t know what they’re really up to until many years later, if ever,” Crew said.
Details of just how law enforcement is making use of its expanded powers remain clouded in
secrecy. But one thing is clear: it doesn’t take much to earn a surprise visit from federal agents
these days.
Just ask San Francisco resident Denver Duffer. Duffer was questioned by a state trooper and a
cop in Blair, Neb., during a three-week road trip last month. He had stopped to admire “a
beautiful old railroad bridge over the Missouri River,” wrote former roommate and Daily Journal
staff writer Peter Blumberg in the Daily Journal, and had taken a few photos on his point-and-
shoot. The officers had received several calls from concerned citizens reporting that a bearded
Arab had been photographing the bridge’s foundations.
After grilling Duffer and rifling through his car and luggage, the officers let him go. But three
weeks later, two FBI special agents appeared at Duffer’s home.
The G-men let him off the hook after questioning him and Blumberg for 20 minutes and looking
at the panoramic photos Duffer had shot during his trip. But the visit raised a disturbing question:
how did a false tip, checked out and then dismissed by local cops in Nebraska, wind up on the
desk of FBI agents in San Francisco?
Just a week before Duffer’s Nebraska run-in, 19-year-old Derek Kjar of Salt Lake City had also
found himself being grilled by two agents – at least one from the Secret Service – after a
neighbor called the feds to report a bumper sticker on Kjar’s car that read, “King George – Off
with his head.”
“They said it was ‘borderline terrorism,’ ” Kjar told Matthew Rothschild, a reporter for the
Progressive’s online McCarthyism Watch.
Media reports have documented dozens of such incidents over the past three years.
Viewed piecemeal, these episodes are troubling enough. But when considered alongside other
disturbing patterns, they point to a much more insidious, Machiavellian offensive against
everyday activists who dare to organize in opposition to the Bush administration’s draconian
policies.
These patterns provide evidence that, despite official claims to the contrary, law enforcement
may be directing much of its domestic antiterrorism efforts into COINTELPRO-style programs –
keeping tabs on activists and otherwise assaulting legitimate dissent.
“If you’re going to start focusing on people not because they’re engaged in violent activity – if
the focus of your approach is going to be because of the political views that they hold – then
inevitably that’s going to lead to the kind of political disruption that was used in COINTELPRO,”
Center for Constitutional Rights legal director Jeff Fogel told me. “To me, that’s the logical
result.”
The Criminal Quakers
A rash of scandals involving sinister, new intelligence outfits corroborate Fogel’s suspicions.
In March 2002, the Denver ACLU filed a class action suit against the local police department
that eventually uncovered proof that Denver cops had been monitoring and keeping files on more
than 3,200 individuals and 208 organizations – the vast majority of whom posed no threat –
despite a city policy prohibiting intelligence gathering not directly associated with criminal
activities. Among what became know in the local press as the “Denver spy files” were
documents labeling the American Friends Service Committee, an 85-year-old pacifist Quaker
group, as one of numerous “criminal extremists.”
“We got, through discovery, documents indicating that the [FBI's]
Joint Terrorism Task Force was also collecting information about people’s peaceful activities –
activities that solely involve political views, not criminal activity,” Mark Silverman, legal
director for the Denver ACLU, told me. One year after the “Denver spy files” scandal and closer
to home, internal documents originally released in response to a public records request by the
Oakland Tribune revealed that the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center – launched just
two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – had been monitoring protest activities throughout
the state and had “issued 30 special advisories that mention political groups in the Bay Area
alone,” reporters Ian Hoffman and Sean Holstege wrote in a July 15, 2003, article. Included
among the groups: the International Action Center, Direct Action to Stop the War, Not in Our
Name, Critical Mass, Black Bloc, the Ruckus Society, the Bay Area Independent Media Center,
and various environmental, animal rights, peace, and nuclear disarmament organizations.
The exposé prompted state attorney general Bill Lockyer to issue a series of guidelines banning
California law-enforcement agencies from monitoring political and religious groups without
reasonable suspicion of a crime.
New guidelines didn’t come soon enough for members of Peace Fresno. On Sept. 1, 2003,
members of the antiwar group were surprised to find an obituary in the Fresno Bee for Aaron
Stokes, a man they’d thought was part of their organization – but whom the paper identified as a
local sheriff’s department officer. As it turned out, Stokes (who’d died in a motorcycle accident)
had belonged to the Fresno County Sheriff Department’s Anti-Terrorism Unit. He’d infiltrated
Peace Fresno and conducted undercover surveillance of the group and its members for six
months.
“What they do with that information … who knows,” Denver ACLU’s Silverstein cautioned.
Meanwhile, the FBI continues to issue secret Intelligence Bulletins similar to CATIC’s on a
weekly basis. The FBI requires law-enforcement agencies nationwide to keep an eye on
“possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI
Joint Terrorism Task Force,” according to a leaked FBI Intelligence Bulletin issued Oct. 15,
2003.
Preemptive Strikes
Paul Bame, a 45-year-old software engineer in Fort Collins, Colo., returned from his lunch break
on July 23 to find a security guard waiting at his desk. The guard escorted him to the building
lobby, where FBI agent Ted Faul was waiting for him.
As it turns out, Faul had looked for Bame at home the evening before and spoken to one of his
neighbors, then left Bame a phone message. Bame had called back the agent in the morning and
left a message on his voice mail.
Faul appeared at Bame’s work, unannounced, anyway.
The agent wanted to know if Bame – a pacifist who’d been arrested on minor infractions at the
2002 anti-World Bank and International Monetary Fund protest in Washington, D.C., and at the
anti-Free Trade Area of the Americas demonstrations in Miami last November – had knowledge
of any plans to disrupt the Republican National Convention taking place a month later.
Faul warned the activist that it’s a crime to have such knowledge and not disclose it. He came
equipped with a thin folder bearing Bame’s name.
“I was shaking with terror,” Bame told me in a phone interview. “To visit my home, call, and
visit me at work, all within an eight-hour work day, shows a sense of urgency, like he was
tracking down a criminal.”
Faul decided not to push for an interview after Bame told him he wouldn’t speak without a
lawyer present. But “his role was done when he came to the door,” Bame said. “My feeling is
that they wanted to make it known that they were watching.
Bame was just one of numerous activists approached by special agents in different parts of the
country prior to the RNC. But the campaign didn’t end with these interviews.
Just a couple of weeks earlier, on Aug. 15, the New York Times broke the story – leaked by
someone inside the FBI – that six-person teams of federal agents had been assigned to trail 56
activists from around the country, beginning immediately and continuing until the end of the
anti-RNC protest activities.
This reporter experienced the joys of being followed by what appeared to be undercover cops
while in New York for the anti-RNC activities too. (They denied being officers.) I’d met up with
a small group of activists who’d called saying they were being followed for the third time. The
undercovers stalked the group everywhere we went, for hours. They’d mention details of where
some of the activists were from and where they’d been. They harangued us – creating suspicion
about us to people on the street and trying to instigate a confrontation (see “The Intimidators,”
9/8/04).
In fact, the campaign against activists that preceded the RNC was just one of the recent
preemptive strikes in the weeks and months leading up to major demonstrations in the United
States.
Three university students from Kirksville, Mo., were among the targets prior to the Democratic
National Convention in Boston. They reported being trailed 24 hours a day and interrogated by
the FBI in late July and “were then subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury on the very day
they were planning to be in Boston for [the protest],” Matthew Rothschild reported for The
Progressive’s McCarthyism Watch Web site. Agents also questioned their parents.
Of course, the government practice of keeping tabs on dissenters is nothing new. In June 2000,
Bay Area anti-globalization activist David Solnit was stopped by Canadian officers after arriving
in Windsor. They had a printout about him provided by the FBI, Solnit told Bay Guardian
reporter A.C. Thompson at the time. Solnit wound up spending four days in the brink before
being released without charges and warned to leave the country (see “Big Brother Was
Watching,” 10/18/01).
Other outspoken advocates of nonviolent civil disobedience have had similar experiences while
trying to travel to Canada or returning to the United States from abroad. Their experiences
indicate that the feds have been sharing intelligence on U.S. activists with other countries for
some time now.
Starhawk and a friend were stopped by immigration agents when they flew into Ottawa, Canada,
in 2001. She was allowed to enter the country after officials questioned her and checked her bags,
but her friend was detained. Records turned up as part of a lawsuit later filed by her friend
showed that the Canadian officials had stopped Starhawk based on information about her arrest
during the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, she said. (She’d been
arrested for obstructing a pedestrian and spent five days in jail before the charges were dropped.
“I was never convicted of anything,” she told me.)
Starhawk, a 40-year-old veteran of progressive movements, reported being stopped every time
she flies into Canada now.
Five customs agents greeted her in Los Angeles as she exited a plane returning from the WTO
protests held in Cancun little more than a year ago.
“There’s definitely been a dramatic escalation in these kinds of activities since [the anti-WTO
protests in] Seattle, and particularly since Sept. 11,” Solnit told me. “They’re criminalizing the
concept of protest.”
I’ve spoken with and received e-mails from numerous activists – in northern California, the Los
Angeles region, Boston, New York, and New Jersey – over the past month detailing similar
experiences. They describe being approached by federal agents asking them to reveal protest
plans and names of other activists, and being trailed.
“The only things we know about the October Plan is what’s been leaked,” Crew of the ACLU of
Northern California said, adding that there are no guarantees that U.S.-born activists aren’t being
targeted as part of that surveillance scheme too.
Media Mouthpieces
During the week of the RNC protests in August, the New York-based Daily News published an
article titled “Anarchists Hot for Mayhem,” cautioning New Yorkers about 50 activists in town
to create havoc. The New York Post published an equally scandalous report on some of the very
same protesters. “Finest Prep for Anarchy,” screamed the headline.
Solnit, Starhawk, and other prominent (and avowedly nonviolent) political organizers were on
the list, their photos displayed prominently in the Daily News’ pages.
Solnit and Starhawk said nobody from the News or the Post ever called them for comment.
That kind of sensational behavior might be typical (if inexcusable) for the scandal-loving New
York tabs – but it didn’t end there. ABC’s eminently respectable Nightline followed suit, in a
segment titled “Vote 2004: Protecting the Republican National Convention” featuring officers of
the NYPD and the Secret Service.
On Aug. 31, the same evening President Bush officially accepted the Republican Party’s
nomination at Madison Square Garden, viewers across the nation watched Ted Koppel warn
Americans about more than two dozen activists whom he referred to as “particularly troublesome,
even dangerous anarchists who infiltrate other groups and then try to provoke violence.” The
segment included mug shots of the suspects, fed to the media by local authorities. Solnit’s photo
from when he’d been arrested at the FTAA protests in Miami was among them.
“That’s as serious as it gets,” CCR’s Fogel said. “The same way they use the word ‘9/11′ in
connection with Iraq, without ever saying ‘Iraq caused 9/11,’ in the hopes that people will
believe that there’s a connection between 9/11 and Iraq – it’s the same as the association of the
word ‘terrorism’ and protest activity. The equation of the word ‘anarchism’ with violence is an
extraordinary equation. I don’t know where that comes from except their desire to paint
particular people with a particular viewpoint as being violent. Because there is no connection
between those two things.”
(Interestingly, Solnit doesn’t even describe himself as an anarchist.)
The consequences are two-fold, he said: to “discourage people from attending such
demonstrations” and to “negate the impact the protest may have” by casting it in a negative light
and characterizing organizers as thugs feeding into the terror threat.
The spoon-feeding of damaging material to the press is eerily reminiscent of what happened to
Stanford University professor H. Bruce Franklin in the late 1960s (see “They’re Watching,” page
19).
Meanwhile, the feds continue to launch assaults against antiwar, grassroots media activists who
try to get the other side of the story out. At the behest of the Secret Service – the agency charged
with coordinating the law-enforcement response for special security events – the Justice
Department subpoenaed New York City’s Indymedia Center’s Internet service provider in
August for records associated with a posting that included the names of RNC delegates.
Authorities subpoenaed San Antonio-based Rackspace, another IMC Web-hosting provider,
demanding access to another of the group’s servers two weeks ago. Rackspace handed over the
data and shut down a second server used to stream various electronic radio programs, without a
word to the IMC.
Both servers were situated in London, where Rackspace operates an affiliate company. The
move affected approximately two dozen IMC sites throughout the world.
Feeling Safer?
Civil liberties watchdog groups obviously worry about the chilling effect these kinds of
surveillance and crackdowns have on our faltering First and Fourth Amendments. But they also
insist that Ashcroft and company’s approach isn’t making us any safer.
When law enforcement fails to distinguish between violent criminal activity and legitimate
dissent – and when it favors collecting as much information on as many people as possible rather
than useful intelligence resulting from bona fide criminal investigations – it’s “choosing quantity
over quality,” Crew said. “You develop good leads by generating trust, not by disrespecting
people’s rights…. [And] if you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, adding more hay doesn’t
help any.”
The bills that have recently passed through the House and Senate in response to the 9-11
Commission’s findings, reorganizing intelligence gathering and expanding Big Brother’s reach
even further into our everyday lives, just promise more of the same.
“It’s during times of fear when civil liberties are most at risk,” Crew said.
Related
FBI’s Anti-Terror ‘October Plan
FBI’s New Surveillance Plan Chills Religious and Political Activity, Bay Area Civil Rights
Groups Warn
http://www.infowars.com/flashback-civil-liberties-under-the-october-plan/
COINTELPRO Returns: My First-Hand
Experience With Government Spies
Dave Zirin
AlterNet
July 21, 2008
Finally, at long last, I have something in common with Muhammad Ali.
No, I’m not the heavyweight champion of the world, and haven’t been named spokesperson for
Raid bug spray. Like “the Greatest” – not to mention far too many others — I have been a target
of state police surveillance for activities — in my case against the death penalty — that were
legal, non-violent, and, so we assumed, constitutionally protected. In classified reports compiled
by the Maryland State Police and the Department of Homeland Security, I am “Dave Z.” This
nickname was given by an undercover agent known to us as “Lucy.” She sat in our meetings of
the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, smiling and engaged, taking copious notes about actions
deemed threatening by the Governor of Maryland, Robert Ehrlich. Our seditious crimes, as Lucy
reported, involved such acts as planning to set up a table at the local farmer’s market and writing
up a petition. Adding a dash of farce to this outrage, she was monitoring us in the liberal enclave
of Takoma Park, Maryland, a place known more for vegans than violence, more for tie-dying
than terrorism.
Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the ACLU, we now know that “Lucy” was only
one part of a vast, insidious project. The Maryland State Police’s Department of Homeland
Security devoted near 300 hours and thousands of taxpayer dollars from 2005 and 2006 to
harassing people whose only crime was dissenting on the question of the war in Iraq and
Maryland’s use of death row.
My dear friend Mike Stark, a board member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty is at
times referred to in “Lucy’s” report as a “socialist” and an “anarchist.” One can only assume this
is the pathetic time honored tradition of reducing people to simple caricatures, all the better to
garner Homeland Security grant money.
Veteran peace activist in Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, who initiated the suit, was as well
consistently shadowed as he walked down the streets. His “primary crime” (their lingo) was
entered into the homeland security database as “terrorism – anti govern(ment).” His “secondary
crime” was listed as “terrorism — anti-war protesters.” The database is known as the
Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA. Yes, a respected peace
organizer of many decades standing is checked as a terrorist, his actions listed as criminal, for
doing nothing more than exercising his rights. It boggles the mind.
Former police superintendent Tim Hutchins defended these totalitarian practices by saying, “You
do what you think is best to protect the general populace of the state.” (The article mentioned
that Hutchins is now a federal defense contractor. I guess The Global War on Terror is just the
gift that keeps on giving for the Hutchins family.)
But “protect the general populace” from what? The surveillance continued even after it was
determined that we were planning nothing more dangerous that carrying clipboards in a public
place. Hutchins and the Ehrlich administration have undertaken an ugly violation of our civil
rights, manipulating fears of terrorism to stamp out dissent.
This is COINTELPRO pure and simple. Like the infamous counter-intelligence program whose
heyday many assume was a relic the 1950s and 1960s, it’s an effort to harass the innocent and
breed paranoia, all for daring to question power.
Governor Ehrlich and Tim Hutchins stand in the legacy of those who hounded Martin Luther
King, and facilitated the death of Malcolm X. They stand in the tradition of those who drove the
great actor, college football superstar, and activist Paul Robeson toward the mental breakdown
that claimed his life. When Robeson’s files were opened under the Freedom of Information Act,
the results were terrifying.
As his son, Paul Robeson Jr. has written, “From the files I received, it was obvious that there
were agents who did nothing but follow every public event of my father, or even of me…. It took
on a life of its own…. Over time, even for someone as powerful and with as many resources as
my dad had…the attrition got to him.”
Now Robeson is on a postage stamp. The moral midgets who destroyed him went unpunished.
That’s what has to change. The ACLU, to their credit, is going on the offensive.
As ACLU lawyer David Rocah said at a news conference in Baltimore on Thursday, “To invest
this many hours investigating the most all-American of activities without any scintilla of
evidence there is anything criminal going on is shocking. It’s Kafkaesque.”
Unfortunately for people like Gov. Ehrlich, it is also “the most All American of activities” to
take the constitution and use it as their personal hand wipe.
As the great political philosopher Ice T wrote, “Freedom of Speech…. just watch what you say.”
Well, now is exactly the time not to watch what we say. I’m angry. I’m angry for my friends,
who trusted “Lucy” and others. I’m angry that my tax dollars went to paying the salaries of
people who spy and intimidate those exercising their rights. I’m angry that Barack Obama just
voted to increase the power of the Federal government to disrupt people’s lives. And I’m angry
enough that I’m joining a lawsuit initiated by the ACLU. “Homeland Security” picked on the
wrong sports writer. They also picked on the wrong group of activists. We will not be silenced.
[People who want to express their outrage can contact the office of the current Governor Martin
O'Malley. We should demand a full investigation of the MSP, public release of all documents
obtained through this illegal activity, and a specific commitment that the anti-death penalty and
anti-war movement will not be targeted. Call the office of the governor at 1-800-811-8336, or
submit a comment online at http://www.governor.maryland.gov/mail/]
http://www.infowars.com/cointelpro-returns-my-first-hand-experience-with-government-spies/
FBI Director’s Term Extension Ensures Neo-
COINTELPRO Operations Will Prevail
Kevin Gosztola
Firedoglake.com
July 30, 2011
Just days ago, the Obama Administration and Congress effectively made legitimate all the
operations of the FBI since FBI Director Robert Mueller took over the agency one week before
the September 11th terror attacks. The extension of Mueller’s term makes it possible for
Congress to move forward without addressing the abuses, misconduct and violations of the law
that have taken place during Mueller’s efforts to transform the agency from a law enforcement
agency to a massive domestic spying agency. Extending Mueller’s term signals any future FBI
director with power and credibility in Washington may be able to skirt term limits.
A 10-year limit was imposed on all future FBI directors after the Church Committee in the 1970s
uncovered FBI efforts under then director J. Edgar Hoover to suppress political dissent through
COINTELPRO. Hoover began to head the agency that would come to be known as the FBI in
1924. For forty-eight years, he served, amassing a level of power in Washington that led his
overseers to fear wielding oversight. Former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach told the
Church Committee he was “unwilling to use” his power because of the “clout” Hoover had in
Congress and with current and previous presidential administrations.
The Senate’s move to pass legislation that would allow for an exception to the term limit
imposed in the 1970s and President Obama’s willingness to preserve continuity in the agency
and not acknowledge FBI history demonstrates this country is faced with a problem similar to
the problem Hoover posed. Mueller may not have been around as long as Hoover, but it appears
that for members of Congress an FBI director in the post-9/11 era can commit no act of
misconduct that would lead to his resignation being demanded.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) finds Mueller has been “forthright in coming before Congress and
explaining” mistakes at the agency. He hasn’t been “simply passing the buck.” Sen. Patrick
Leahy (D-VT), who likely would claim to be a leader on FBI oversight in Congress, said on the
term extension, “I would hope that all senators would step forward and vote for this nomination,
and I can think of no reason why they shouldn’t.” He concluded Mueller is “typical of many in
our government who serve the people of America tirelessly, without any gain for themselves.”
The US Senate held a vote on the term extension and unanimously approved the two-year
extension. No senators had a problem with granting this extension, despite the fact that it would
establish a clear precedent for undoing one of the biggest reforms to come as a result of the
Church Committee.
As FBI director, Mueller has misled Congress on the extent of FBI agents’ exposure to abuse and
torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Sen. Leahy may have willfully
chosen to overlook this fact, since he was the one who made this point back in December 2006,
but Mueller came before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2004 and was asked by Sen.
Leahy if agents had seen “objectionable interrogation practices.” He said no agents had
witnessed abuse “in Iraq,” an answer that deliberately allowed him to skirt taking responsibility.
But, in December 2004, documents were released proving FBI agents had witnessed abuse and
torture of detainees.
Under Mueller, the FBI has employed the use of warrantless GPS tracking. Twenty-year old
Yasir Afifi, an Arab-American, found a “black, rectangular device” attached to his car. He
thought it was a pipe bomb and posted photos to Reddit.com, hoping someone would help him
identify what he had found. FBI agents showed up at his door days later demand he return the
device. (Both Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder have been sued for violating Afifi’s
constitutional rights.)
Mueller has defended the use of entrapment schemes to ensnare and arrest so-called “terror
suspects,” particularly Muslims. In the case of the Newburgh 4, the FBI helped four individuals,
three whom are now in jail for twenty-five years, plan and almost commit a terror attack. Once
the men from poor and underprivileged backgrounds were conned and were about to set off
explosives, the FBI arrested the individuals. Relaxed guidelines have made it possible for the
FBI to engage in these schemes and use informants to gather names, emails and phone numbers
of individuals, who regular attend mosques even if there is no suspicion of criminal activity.
Mueller has also defended the shooting of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah in Detroit by FBI
agents in October 2009. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing in March of this year,
Representative John Conyers (D-MI) asked Mueller about the shooting saying the community he
represents was still reeling from the extrajudicial killing. He told Mueller there was an
“undercurrent of criticism about some of the undercover informants of the FBI stirring up trouble
in the Arab American community.” Mueller responded by defending the FBI’s outreach to
Muslim, Arab and Sikh Americans. And, he defended the FBI’s murder of Abdullah saying, “I
think everyone who has looked at that incident believes that the response was appropriate under
the circumstances.”
A recently published report on government secrecy from the ACLU indicates three clear
instances of misconduct or abuse of power.
Congress met in 2005 to debate whether to extend provisions of the PATRIOT Act that were due
to expire. Mueller testified before a key intelligence committee claiming allegation of abuse of
the PATRIOT Act could not be “substantiated. “ The ACLU concludes Congress had no way to
verify this statement and, absent evidence of abuse, reauthorized the PATRIOT Act in 2006.
Simultaneously, an audit of the FBI’s use of National Security Letters (NSLs), which allow the
FBI to force credit card companies, financial institutions, and internet service providers to give
confidential records about customers’ subscriber information, phone number, email addresses
and the websites they’ve visited, was ordered. The audit uncovered “thousands of violations of
law and policy” and there is no way that Mueller had no idea that NSLs were routinely being
employed illegally.
In March 2009, provisions of the PATRIOT Act were once again set to expire. Sen. Ben Cardin
(D-MD) asked the FBI for recommendations on reauthorizing the provisions. Mueller testified
on the “lone wolf” provision, which gives the FBI the power to investigate “lone terrorists” who
have no connection to foreign nations or organizations suspected of terrorism. Mueller called the
provision “tremendously helpful” and said it was “beneficial and should be reenacted.” But, the
Department of Justice later admitted that this provision, which civil liberties groups have said
could lead to protesters being subjected to investigations for domestic terrorism, had never been
used.
And, in 2006, the ACLU exposed FBI spying on political activists, which included the
“surveillance of a peaceful anti-war protest by the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” The FBI under Mueller made up a story to escape criticism.
Mueller claimed the surveillance had been “related to a separate, validly-approved terrorism
investigation.” Sen. Leahy (who applauds Mueller’s commitment to ensuring that the FBI
adheres to the values and freedoms that Americans hold dear), asked for documentation of this
claim. The FBI was unable to produce any evidence so the story collapsed. Then, on the record,
FBI officials made up a second story. The Inspector General tried to investigate who was making
up these stories, but the FBI refused to turn over emails so a proper investigation could be
conducted.
The FBI of the post-9/11 era is increasingly indistinguishable from the FBI under Hoover, which
routinely targeted political dissidents. The FBI has been intimidating WikiLeaks supporters,
especially individuals involved in organizing with the grassroots organization, the Bradley
Manning Support Network. It has subpoenaed the Manning Support Network’s co-founder David
House to appear before a federal grand jury into WikiLeaks in Alexandria, Virginia. And, the
FBI in one instance harassed House’s friend, who has had nothing to do with computer or
activism. They subjected him to hours of interrogation and required him to surrender notes on his
meeting with FBI agents if he wished to get out of detention.
The FBI has made animal rights and environmental activists a “number one domestic terrorism
threat,” despite a warning from the Justice Department as far back as 2003 to not obsess over
animal rights and environmental activists. Will Potter of GreenistheNewRed.com finds
throughout history there have been government campaigns against progressive social activists.
Evidence of FBI targeting of animal rights and environmental activists shows how key aspects of
COINTELPRO has been institutionalized by government.
In the last few months of 2010, twenty-three antiwar, labor and international solidarity activists
were subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago. The activists from Chicago,
the Twin Cities in Minnesota and other areas in the Midwest, had their homes raided by the FBI
with documents, cell phones, storage disks, computers and children’s artwork seized. Search
warrants and subpoenas suggested the FBI was targeting the activists for evidence that they had
provided “material support to terrorism.”
On January 12, 2011, targeted activists announced an agent named “Karen Sullivan” infiltrated
the Twin Cities Antiwar Committee (AWC) to monitor the group’s organizing efforts for the
Republican National Convention. And, in May, a Los Angeles County Sheriff SWAT team,
accompanied by FBI agents, raided long-time Chicano activist Carlos Montes. They essentially
looted his home taking his computer, cell phone, computer disks, photos and forty-four years
worth of political activist files. Montes was arrested and questioned about his support for antiwar
activists raided in the Midwest in September of last year.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR), composed primarily of activists subpoenaed to
appear before a grand jury investigating their activism, found FBI documents an agent left
behind in a home during a raid. They published the documents on May 18. The documents
included a list of questions they wanted to ask the targeted activists, and the list proves that the
FBI is investigating US citizens for their political beliefs.
Last year, the FISA court approved over 1,500 FBI requests to electronically monitor suspects.
The FBI obtained permission to spy on at least 14,000 people. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has
warned the FBI is using secret interpretations of the PATRIOT Act to justify a greater authority
to collect information. And, in June, the FBI further expanded its power by issuing new
guidelines that grant the agency the authority to conduct undocumented database searches, lie
detector tests, trash searches and expand the use of surveillance squads. It has claimed more
power to investigate public officials, scholars and journalists and approved rules that would
provide more freedom for agents and informants to not disclose participation in organizations
that are targets of FBI surveillance.
The extension of Mueller’s term ensures the FBI will continue to commit massive abuse of the
law and will continue to violate Americans’ civil liberties. It makes certain Congress will not
hold proper oversight hearings to rein in the agency, which has greatly run amok as a result of
power granted to it in the aftermath of 9/11.
There will be no reflection on operations of the agency. As with most policies, programs and
government agencies these days, Congress and the Obama Administration have decided
continuity is more important than addressing lawless and illicit operations in government. And,
in doing so, they have chosen to follow a credo of President Obama’s and move forward without
looking back.
This article was posted: Saturday, July 30, 2011 at 10:37 am
http://www.infowars.com/fbi-directors-term-extension-ensures-neo-cointelpro-operations-will-prevail/
Is COINTELPRO Effort Underway to
Sabotage Ron Paul in Iowa?
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
January 2, 2012
As should be obvious by now, the establishment will do almost anything to make sure Ron Paul
does not win the Iowa caucus tomorrow. It will sabotage his campaign if that’s what it takes to
make sure he does not win.
On December 29, the Occupy Des Moines or the Occupy the Caucus group traveled to Ron
Paul’s Ankeny, Iowa, campaign office and staged an “impromptu demonstration.” A dozen or so
protesters chanted anti-Paul slogans and blocked the door of the office. Five of them were
arrested after the police ordered them to disperse.
Clarke Davidson and Occupy Des Moines members are arrested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvlJiIpXmys&feature=player_embedded
On December 31, The End Run website noted that one of the arrested, Clarke Davidson, has an
interesting background. In addition to claiming to be a Ron Paul precinct captain, Clarke is the
person who uploaded a video to YouTube purportedly from the shadowy hacktivist group
Anonymous calling for a shut down of the Iowa caucus.
“In case you haven’t heard, this ‘threat’ video is now being used in conjunction with these
‘Occupy’ protests (which have targeted other candidates this week as well) as a pretext to move
the vote counting in Iowa to a secret location,” explains the website.
Oddly, although Davidson now disagrees with Paul – despite claiming to be a precinct captain
for his campaign – he was holding an End the Fed placard when he was arrested. Ron Paul, of
course, wrote the book on the End the Fed movement.
The threat to shut down the caucus has given the establishment the perfect excuse it needs to
count the vote at a secret location and make sure Ron Paul loses. It also provides a pretext to get
the FBI and the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center involved. Iowa RINOs are “assessing security
procedures” and “crafting a new, more error-proof system for the roughly 800 Republican caucus
sites to report their results to party headquarters.”
The End Run has posted a detailed timeline covering the suspicious activities of Clarke Davidson,
who fits the profile of a governmental intelligence operative to the letter. His behavior has all the
hallmarks of COINTELPRTO activity.
Vote manipulation and rigging in the United States is epidemic, as Black Box Voting has
documented, so it should come as no surprise that the establishment would attempt to skew the
caucus in order to downgrade Ron Paul and damage his effort win the presidency and work to
finally return the United States to its constitutional republic roots.
It now appears our rulers will engineer the result they desire – Romney in the lead with
Santorum second – and they have the police state apparatus in place to micromanage the effort
under the guise of hacktivist and Occupy terrorism threats.
If elements of the Occupy movement and Anonymous are not intelligence operations, then they
are nothing less than useful idiots who will allow the state to once again determine the outcome
of an important election.
This article was posted: Monday, January 2, 2012 at 12:54 pm
http://www.infowars.com/is-cointelpro-effort-underway-to-sabotage-ron-paul-in-iowa/
Cynthia McKinney on 9/11 and
COINTELPRO
You Tube
September 29, 2008
Former Member of Congress (D-GA) and 2008 Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia
McKinney speaking about the war games that were happening on 9/11, Operation Northwoods,
COINTELPRO, and the 9/11 Commission.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hPJG5bTEHbI
Wikileaks: CoIntelPro Psyop
Silver Shield
Don’t Tread On Me
February 2, 2011
I have had it with Wikileaks. I am fully convinced that Wikileaks is a Counter Intelligence
Program and a Psychological Operation by either CIA, MI6 or Mossad.
The CIA/MI6/Mossad have trashed their reputation, which has caused their scare tactics to ware
off. They have created a new “credible” source like Wikileaks to dump their same old tired
lies through them. Seriously, how difficult would it have been for the CIA to grab some hacker
and play good cop, bad cop with him. They could say, “we got you good and we are going to
throw you in jail for the rest of your life. Or you can work with us and we will wipe away all of
your charges.” It works with low level mafia thugs, why not on a global scale where the stakes
are that much higher. Even in the Matrix had a scene just like this.
Wikileaks has all of the power to spread the truth on the internet and all of the secrecy that
the Elite uses. When this site first came on the scene, I’ll admit that I bought it hook line and
sinker. A group of rich, sophisticated hackers that want to shed light on everything the Elite want
to keep secret… “That is awesome!” I knew in the beginning that their intelligence dumps
would not be big or yield much of a result. It is the nature of the beast in this business. No one
will stick their neck out for you, until you have some street credibility.
Wikileaks went from damaging attack helicopter video of murdered civilians, to petty school girl
chatter about foreign diplomats to finally, outright propaganda.
I’ve given Wikileaks the benefit of the doubt, even up until a week or two ago in my Beware of
the Patriot Pied Pipers article. In my article, I had listed about 20 things that would really hack at
the root of the Elite’s power. I practically pleaded with them to, “Get me something to rock the
world out of it’s slumber.” Let’s face it, when Wikileak’s intelligence dumps sound like the
same shit that NeoCons used to scare the American people into Iraq and Afghanistan, it is time
to judge a tree by it’s fruit.
Look at today’s Drudge Report headline, “Wikileaks: ‘Al-Qaida On Brink Of Using Nuke
Bomb.” This is right out of the same play book of 2003, with all the talk of mushroom clouds
and yellow cake. This is why I think Wikileaks is a front for the same guys that brought you 9
years of senseless wars. No one really believes the State Department and CIA anymore.
Certainly not after Colin”Slam Dunk” Powell destroyed not only his reputation, but that of
America when he went before the UN to make the case for preemptive war. So, they created
Wikileaks to to be a “legitimate” source of information.
Or what about this headline about the spooky 9/11 gang that got away… A DECADE AGO!
Really, what internet blogger/hacker would publish stuff like this? Wikileak’s sole purpose was
to expose secrets and not push propaganda. There are thousands of sites on the internet showing
pretty damning evidence that 9/11 was an inside job. Yet, here is Wikileaks, the biggest, baddest
site in the Freedom Movement, publishing stuff that would give Ruppert Murdoch a boner? It is
time to judge a tree by it’s fruit.
This has created a new Hegelian Dialectic, where the Elite give us two false choices to
choose from. Both options are controlled by the Elite in order to benefit themselves. It is
designed to fool us with the ability to choose the lesser of two evils.
Socialism or Fascism, never a Constitutional Republic.
Democrats or Republicans, never a true Independent.
Wall St or D.C., never Main St.
Ahhh freedom! (Where is that sarcasm button…)
So now we have the new Hegelian Dialectic of Wikileaks or CIA/MI6/Mossad, never any real
truth to rock the world.
Don’t be fooled by this and judge a tree by it’s fruit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=98wjf83XQ6I
Another Hegelian Dialectic the Elite control system is America vs. Al Qaida. It is well
known that America created and funded Al Qaida, just like we’ve created Saddam. In this video,
here is globalist, head honcho Zbigniew Brezinski, in Pakistan at the very beginning of the
Mujahideen. This radicalization of the Muslims was our attempt to fight the Russians back in the
day. We have armed and trained them to fight. In fact, Al Qaida literally means “the base,” and
guess what, we’ve built that base too! These fake bad guys are used by the Elites to justify
profitable wars for resources and more control at home.
So if you can truly see through these levels of lies the Drudge Report headline should read like
this…
I am interested in what happens with the Openleaks. Again, this sounds awesome on the face
of it. It has one key feature that sets it apart from Wikileaks, it is a decentralized approach of
leaking info. Wikileaks uses the same sort of centralized secrecy that they supposedly are
fighting against. Openleaks gets rid of the centralized and secretive approach and replace it with
a decentralized, open approach as explained in their introductory video.
OpenLeaks 101 from openleaks on Vimeo.
One final thought. I have been warning you about how the Egyptian Revolution and the
National Tea Party movement will fail. I say this because they have no idea what they are up
against. I wrote that the National Tea Party will fail because of the same power that has
infiltrated, corrupted, and destroyed both the Republican and Democratic parties, are now doing
the same to the Tea Party. I wrote about the globalist powers directly behind Tea Party favorites
like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin in Beware of the Patriot Pied Pipers.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
I want to point out another Patriot Pied Piper, Charles Krauthammer. This crippled,
NeoCon was on Fox News everyday spouting the NeoCon agenda with Britt Hume. I know
because I was glued to Fox news from 2001 to 2005 before I woke up. Charles is very intelligent
and thoughtful, but at the end of the day, we need to judge him by his war propaganda and say
never again.
Wake Some People Up!
This article was posted: Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 11:25 am
OpenLeaks blog
New GPG key
By OpenLeaks on December 30, 2012 10:48 AM
You may have noticed that the GPG key for our contact email address has expired. Those of you who
would like to use GPG to send us private email are welcome to use the following new public key, whose
fingerprint is 7219 CA43 D056 0D7D 7D00 6CD8 096B F528 4470 0BCF and which is signed with
our old key.
Hello world
By Daniel Domscheit-Berg on December 23, 2012 11:47 PM
Hello world,
despite popular belief (quite likely resulting from our own lack of communication with you), this
project is still alive.
We have since the conception of this project worked on what by now has become a broad strategy for a
decentralised, sustainable and secure leaking environment on the internet.
We had started out with an idea of what such a distributed leaking system should look like (and what
not), and another idea of how we could implement it. And as great as that first idea was (and by now
has become), we were underestimating that second part -- especially when it came to the time it
would consume.
Our premises
We strongly believe that, in order for our world to be healthy, we need whistleblowers as corrective
mechanisms. Ideally, the act of blowing the whistle should be welcomed and as widely encouraged as
possible, protected by strong laws. But whatever the societal or legal framework, it will require
technology to safeguard any digital whistles and those blowing them, and the skills to securely handle
that technology and what is coming with it.
Whoever wants to be responsible for offering a leaking platform to the world, their industry, area of
interest or local community, i.e. media organisations, NGOs, and the like, needs to be able to
understand the constraints of any such solution in general, and in respect to the organisations
particular situation. These constraints, be they legal, technical, organisational, or whatever else, make
the rules. They define what is possible and what is not, for example when it comes to protecting
sources.
From those constraints one needs to be able to abstract a thorough risk analysis. Risk for sources, or
risk for the organisation itself. That risk analysis has to be the first step to understanding the limits of
what can be done -- and what cannot. Those limits in an internet environment often are different
compared to ones most organisations are familiar with. The best basis for taking a risk, which often is
well rewarding, is thriving for a thorough understanding of what that risk will involve.
If deciding to go for it the risks and constraints are translated into requirements in respect to security
and anonymity of users of the site. But it does only begin there. Working with material, keeping it safe
when working with or storing it, and how-to integrate that with existing services and workflows are a
few more topics. One will probably not find two newspapers using the same editorial system or
technical environment, so solutions here will need to be adapted to the specific case.
While there is some common ground which we implemented in a reference installation, we now
understand that all but a few technical features are very specific to a particular organisation. To really
and properly implement any solution requires first and foremost not only passively understanding it,
but being part of the intellectual development process.
Taking it from here
Having come to this understanding, we see our role today in three main fields:
1. know-how transfer with partners for building up "leaking sites" (workshops, co-development),
alongside or independent of the OpenLeaks system
2. know-how exchange and feedback on existing, independent "leaking sites" with 3rd party
operators (meetings, workshops), and possible integration with other partners
3. education of journalists, activists, human rights workers, et al on computer and communication
security and data privacy, anti-forensics and working with sensitive data, etc (workshops)
We will focus on the transfer of know-how to organisations that want to offer such a service, rather
than provide them with a service. So where we started out thinking that OpenLeaks will be more or less
just a technical service, run by us and provided to those organisations, our partners, we have come to
the conclusion that this will not do the complexity and ultimately our goal the required justice. We
want to see any organisation seriously interested in harnessing the potential of whistleblowers in the
digital world to have the skills for it. We can contribute by providing expertise, and by fostering a
collaborative effort towards the best possible solution. Not the least for the sake of a technically more
savvy forth estate of the future.
For the development of a leaking site, we start with assessing the situation and the risks, and help
build a basis to determine where to take it from there. Whatever else happens as a result of that. If
your organisation has an interest in providing a whistleblower service, please get in touch with us.
We have already given, and are still offering, feedback on existing solutions in order to help improve
the various processes and systems in use. If you are already providing a leak submission system, feel
free to contact us if you want to discuss it. We are happy to share our expertise.
Lastly, we are offering workshops on computer and communication security to a range of activists and
journalists, hoping to foster a better understanding of a computerised environment for those handling
sensitive information in this world. Get in touch if you are interested.
Our workshops are mainly run out of our workshop rooms close to Berlin, but other arrangements can
be discussed. The length of workshops depends on the depth of the discussed topics.
A word on finances, timing and independence
Other than a total of around 3200 EUR some of you were kind enough to donate despite of our silence,
OpenLeaks as of today is completely funded out of our own pockets. "Our" referring to about half a
dozen people working on this project on and off. We have built out our own office and workshop space,
where we can independently meet and work -- and more importantly run our workshops from.
We are much later then expected, other than for the complexity of the task at hand, because quite
honestly, we all have sidetracks that need to be taken care of, it took time to build out our working
environment and gain some independence, and there were plenty of conferences worth engaging in to
drive forward some of our topics on other levels.
Given that OpenLeaks will always be a non-profit project, we are looking for as much independence as
possible so we can keep working on this topic that is so very dear to all of us. We believe that we are in
a pretty good position for now and the future.
Time will tell and we will keep you posted. More updates will follow here and on twitter @openleaks.
Continue reading Hello world.
http://openleaks.org/
Wikileaks: Corrupted Oracle or a Cointelpro
Asset of the Establishment?
Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
December 8, 2010
You can judge a tree by its fruit. In the case of Wikileaks, its low-hanging fruit.
There is only one thing more dangerous than a fundamentalist Neo-conservative, and that’s a
naive liberal. In the wake of the demolition of the modern, somewhat mythological illusory icon
Barrack Obama, people who identify themselves as liberal watchdogs have been left wanting for
a new hero.
Enter the Messiah 2.0, the silver haired saviour, one Julian Assange. The ascent and timing of the
Wikileaks phenomenon could not be more scripted and perfect. This magnificent digital cloud
has literally captured the minds of eternally frustrated people the world over- frustrated by war,
corruption and the endless cloak and dagger exploits of our leaders. The uploading of 250,000
“secret cables” threatened to bring down the corrupt Washington Establishment. In reality
however, it has done nothing of the sort, bizarrely bolstering the status quo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0y1sg1dtBQ&feature=player_embedded
What exactly is Wikileaks? The pieces are now coming together.
The soil was readied for the arrival of Wikileaks by a decade of anonymous postings on highly
questionable Islamic websites featuring pixelated avatars of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-
Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and similar theatrical villains in the West’s staged
production of the Global War on Terror. What the anonymous Islamic dot.com boom achieved
was to validate all manner of mysterious postings and virtual events online as something
purporting to be modern historical record. Washington, London and Tel Aviv validated these
internet episodes with official State Dept reactions and high level addresses. Hence, foreign
policies, domestic security state measures and war-time decisions could now be based on this
new virtual theatre of events. Enter stage left, the anamorphic character, crusader for free speech,
Mr Julian Assange, alleged founder of the free liberal world’s latest beacon of light, Wikileaks.
In the complexed world of intelligence leaks, counter leaks, false leaks and misinformation it is
often difficult for the casual observer to separate the wheat from the chaff. Leaks are used by the
Establishment to out rogue agents, settle political scores or create timely diversions needed by
intelligence services to maintain an air of chaos on the front pages of the major daily rags. But
the real clues to the political functions of these leaks are often hidden in plain sight. Case inpoint:
this past summer’s Wikileaks cache which featured former Pakistani ISI Chief, Hamid Gul,
portaying him as an active puppet master working in cahoots with Al Qaeda and the Taliban to
attack US and NATO forces in the region, was one of the clearest giveaways as to the real
function and dark pedigree of the so-called intelligence pouring out of this seemingly trustworthy
Icelandic online oracle. In the years running up to this US ’leak’, General Hamid Gul was one of
the most consistent and relentless critics of the US foreign policy and the military occupations in
the region, as well as its often duplicitous relationship with its client state Pakistan. Gul even
went so far as to accuse elements within the US intelligence structure as being either responsible
or involved in the planning and execution of the infamous September 11th attacks of 2001. This
of course, was a bombshell at the time and placed Hamid Gul in the crosshairs of Washington’s
military and intelligence establishments. It was, afterall, Gul- the old inside man in the pay of the
CIA, who worked for Washington in the 1980′s to train and arm the mujahedeen in Soviet
occupied Afghanistan. The July 2010 Wikileaks file on General Gul repositioned him from
whistleblower into a new member of the revised ’Al Qaeda camp’, an ememy of the state, thus
priming the engines of the CIA Gulfstream Jet that could now pick up the retired Pakistani
General as an enemy combatant in the War on Terror, black sack and all. From annoying inside
to demonised outsider. Job done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFpcMvtpeHA&feature=player_embedded
Watch Hamid Gul’s reaction to the Wikileak release
More importantly, however, what this supposed Wiki-revelation did was to fuel the new idea that
there is now ”mistrust” between these two close allies in the war on terror, and “without each
other’s support they cannot win the war on terror”. Bare in mind that during this time, US drone
attacks and Blackwater encroachments into Pakistani territory had reached a new high. This is
only one example, but certainly a telling one, and virtually identical in execution to Osama bin
Laden’s fabled timely election messages and Christmas addresses to the world, further
demonstrating the uncanny timing and disinformation coming out of many of these Wikileaks
doc dumps.
Many, if not all of those warm timely Bin Laden festive messages have been debunked, and
exposed as contrived fakes put out by the CIA’s shadowy media arm Intel Center, but again
viewers need to bare in mind the importance of these messages in the formation of public
opinion and feeling on issues surrounding both domestic and foreign policy. These controlled
items are invalueable and serve a real PR purpose. Wikileaks can be analysed in a similar fashion
by noting the timing of the content, the material released, the subsequent predictable media
reaction to them, and also noting what is ommitted from these supposed ‘tell all’ mega files.
The Business of Leaking
In the case of Washington, when real world events become difficult to manage in PR terms, a
diversion is essential. The old formula of staging fake terror plots, or even real terror bombs has
reached its end with the public, so what is better than combing through the Pentagon’s back
catalogue of PDF files and adding a few new files for good measure, then uploading them to an
off-shore server? It’s cheap, fast and best all, it’s easy to controlled. A junior officer could do the
job. Amazingly, nowhere in any of these sinister cables appears any implications of criminal
wrong doing by Herrs Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Obama or Blair. Nowhere is there any trace of
implications or criticism of the US’s number one ally and moral/material partner in the illegal
Middle East occupations- Israel. One secret cable even numbered Iraqi civilian deaths since the
invasion at a mere 66,000- in effect rewriting previous UN and independent estimates of 1.5
million deaths. Can we take this seriously? So we get 250,000 ‘secret’ files dumped and the
prevailing Establishment remains firmly in tact with no real change in the status quo? Interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg5Nc0USdKQ&feature=player_embedded
Webster Tarpley breaks down the problem with Julian Assange and Wikileaks
Time will tell what policy and law changes will be rushed into place as a Neo-conservative
reaction against Wikileaks’ staged embarrassment of the US State Dept. Perhaps Washington
and London will enact new security measures and authorities to take down hundreds of ‘rogue’
websites that threaten the interests of National Security. That would of course be an own-goal for
liberal watchdogs and fans pining for Assange and Wikileaks, but this is precisely the kind of
reaction we can expect in the media circus surrounding the flimsy internet Wikileak phenomenon.
If it all goes south for Wikileaks and free speech online, you can expect Assange to be hard on
the lecture circuit promoting his new book, which you can buy in hardback on Amazon for
$24.99.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Whether the new liberal cult hero Julian Assange is in fact a “useful idiot” helping to propagate
fake leaks for the Establishment, or is a bona fide covert intelligence operative, remains to be
seen. His recent detention in the UK for alleged sexual abuse in Sweden is providing endless
media columns which will focus on the international legal circus of these charges, and further
propel the cult of personality forward. One thing is fairly certain though, that Wikileaks is a
corrupt oracle putting out a mix of light-to-middleweight intelligence and outright
misinformation, in order to direct public opinion on a variety of issues. One needs only to look at
the initial George Soros-type funding vessels and early support for Wikileaks, and tie these
association together to trace its genealogy. This is complexed and not for amateurs, but utterly
fascinating for those willing to look deeper into this virtual off-shore Conintelpro organ of the
21st century.
Our advice to readers: be vigilant when analysing your Wikileaks. Watch for the low-
hanging fruit… look but don’t bite!
This article was posted: Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 11:03 am
http://www.infowars.com/wikileaks-corrupted-oracle-or-a-cointelpro-asset-of-the-establishment/
The Return of COINTELPRO?
Tom McNamara
counterpunch.org
January 23, 2013
“Democracies die behind closed doors” – Judge Damon J. Keith
For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly
coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO
(COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to
protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon
devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens.
Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views
and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.
The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the
duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political
order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in
constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of
COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any
individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.
The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and
assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the
more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation
and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western
industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic
surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public
exposure.
Or did it?
In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that
COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF
was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS)
movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat. This despite
the FBI’s own acknowledgement that the OWS organizers themselves planned on engaging in
peaceful and popular protest and did not “condone the use of violence.”
The documents, while heavily redacted, give a clear picture of how the FBI was using its offices
and agents across the country as early as August 2011 to engage in a massive surveillance
scheme against OWS. This was almost a month before any actual protests took place or
encampments were set up (the most famous being the one in New York City’s Zuccotti Park).
The FBI’s documents show a government agency at its most paranoid. It considered all planned
protests, and the individuals involved, as potential threats. Most disturbing of all, there is talk (p.
61) of the government being ready to “engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston,
Texas, if deemed necessary” and perhaps needing to formulate a plan “to kill the leadership [of
the protest groups] via suppressed sniper rifles.”
Furthermore, the documents reveal a close and intricate partnership between the federal
government on one side and banks and private businesses on the other.
On August 19, 2011, the FBI met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange in order
to discuss OWS protests that wouldn’t happen for another four weeks. In September of that year,
even before OWS got into full swing, the FBI was notifying local businesses that they might be
affected by protests. It is not clear if, while on Wall Street, the FBI investigated the criminal and
irresponsible behavior engaged in by some of the largest banks on the planet, behavior which led
directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
We are also introduced to a creature named the “Domestic Security Alliance Council” which,
according to the federal government, is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department
of Homeland Security and the private sector.” A DSAC report tells us that any information
shared between US intelligence agencies and their corporate partners should not be released to
“the media, the general public or other personnel.”
In a curious coincidence, nine days after the PCJF’s embarrassing release of FBI documents, the
New York Post ran a story about how a 27 year old woman and her “Harvard grad and Occupy
Wall Street” boyfriend, Aaron Greene, were arrested by officers from the New York City Police
Department (NYPD) after an alleged cache of weapons and bomb making explosives were found
in their Greenwich Village apartment.
And what exactly led the police to this apartment? Was it credible actionable intelligence
gathered from the FBI’s massive domestic surveillance program? Did some agent acquire this
information by bravely infiltrating the potential domestic terrorist group known as OWS? Hardly.
The NYPD was simply executing a routine search warrant related to a credit card-theft case.
But in a story about the exact same event that appeared in the New York Times, it was reported
that “police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements” and
that no “evidence of a planned terrorist attack” had been found . Furthermore, police hadn’t
“made a connection to any known plot or any connection to any known terrorists.” No mention
was made of the suspect’s alleged ties to the OWS movement, an item that had been prominently
reported in the New York Post’s version of events.
Oddly, a more recent New York Post story stated that Mr. Greene was now a “Nazi-loving
Harvard grad” and a reported “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.” No mention was made of his suspected
ties to OWS. This author made several attempts to contact the New York Post, and the writers of
the 2 articles, in an effort to find out how they knew that Mr. Greene was an OWS member and
activist. Attempts were also made to try to find out if the New York Post still believed that Mr.
Greene was an active OWS member, or if they now simply thought that he was just an “Adolf
Hitler-wannabe.”
As of the writing of this article, no response has been received from the New York Post.
The FBI’s stated mission regarding America’s security is to “develop a comprehensive
understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire
and capability to harm us.”
The American people would be far better served by their government if, instead of wasting
millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours harassing peaceful protesters, it spent a fraction
of that time and money investigating, and bringing to justice, the people responsible for the
engineered destruction of the American economy, and by extension, American society.
You know. The real terrorists.
Tom McNamara is an Assistant Professor at the ESC Rennes School of Business, France, and a
Visiting Lecturer at the French National Military Academy at Saint-Cyr, Coëtquidan, France.
Sources
“COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens”
Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans,
Book III, Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to
Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 23, 1976. Accessed at:
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
“COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story”, by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert
Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce
Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn.
Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson at the World
Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa by the members of the Congressional Black
Caucus attending the conference: Donna Christianson, John Conyers, Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Diane Watson, September 1, 2001.
Accessed at:
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/coinwcar3.htm
“FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring” The Partnership for Civil
Justice Fund (PCJF), December 22, 2012. Accessed at:
http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html
“Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources” by
Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci and Matt McNulty, December 31, 2012, The New York Post.
Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SD
ZyfC1pLVXN
“Manhattan Couple Stored Bomb-Making Items, Police Say” by Wendy Ruderman, December
31, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/nyregion/manhattan-couple-stored-bomb-making-items-
police-say.html?_r=2&%29&
“More About FBI Spying” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), June 25, 2010.
Accessed at:
http://www.aclu.org/spy-files/more-about-fbi-spying
“NYC couple arrested after explosive substance find” December 31, 2012, CBS/AP. Accessed at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57561371/nyc-couple-arrested-after-explosive-
substance-find/
“Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy” by Naomi Wolf, December 29,
2012, The Guardian. Accessed at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation – Mission” The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accessed
at:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/intelligence/mission
“Village ‘bomber’ planned to blow up Washington Sq. Arch with high-grade explosives: cops”
by Jamie Schram and Jessica Simeone, January 10, 2013, The New York Post. Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/village_bomber_planned_grade_blow_seiuSwWLlcAPyGv
fDkPwDM
Similar/Related Articles
1. The SF8, FBI Repression, and the Return of COINTELPRO
2. COINTELPRO 2.0
3. COINTELPRO Déjà Vu: FBI Recruits Informers for the RNC
4. Is Nico Haupt a COINTELPRO Operative?
5. Flashback: the New COINTELPRO
6. Connecticut lawmakers return to work and guns take center stage
7. COINTELPRO Returns: My First-Hand Experience With Government Spies
8. FBI Director’s Term Extension Ensures Neo-COINTELPRO Operations Will Prevail
9. Is COINTELPRO Effort Underway to Sabotage Ron Paul in Iowa?
10. Cynthia McKinney on 9/11 and COINTELPRO
11. Wikileaks: CoIntelPro Psyop
12. Wikileaks: Corrupted Oracle or a Cointelpro Asset of the Establishment?
This article was posted: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 8:48 am
Tags: domestic news, domestic spying, police state
Comment on this article
16 Responses to “The Return of COINTELPRO?”
1. theNWOsucks says:
January 23, 2013 at 6:26 pm
Remove the spaces, read, save, copy and distribute this booklet to others for it shows you
ways to fight the police state.
Here is the link below:
http: // anti – politics. net / distro / 2009 / warriorsecurity -read . pdf
Reply
2. RuffNreddy says:
January 23, 2013 at 5:05 pm
What about project Mockingbird? It is alive and well also. Anyone that cannot see that is
blind. Wake up! They bragged that they would take the United States without firing a
shot. Everybody had better pay attention and prepare to defend yourselves!
Reply
3. Ohio John says:
January 23, 2013 at 11:45 am
OWS movement was a real threat because it pointed the finger at the real criminals. The
bankers
Reply
o theNWOsucks says:
January 23, 2013 at 6:28 pm
Ohio John
Remove the spaces, read, save, copy and distribute this booklet to others for it
shows you ways to fight the police state.
Here is the link below:
http: // anti – politics. net / distro / 2009 / warriorsecurity -read . pdf
Reply
4. TheLastAmerican says:
January 23, 2013 at 11:32 am
Stop their paychecks!!!!
Reply
o theNWOsucks says:
January 23, 2013 at 6:29 pm
TheLastAmerican
Remove the spaces, read, save, copy and distribute this booklet to others for it
shows you ways to fight the police state.
Here is the link below:
http: // anti – politics. net / distro / 2009 / warriorsecurity -read . pdf
Reply
5. LittleWing says:
January 23, 2013 at 10:56 am
aka satan’s servants
Reply
6. 1patroit says:
January 23, 2013 at 10:48 am
EVERYONE DON’T FORGET TO WATCH THE WATCHERS AND ALWAYS FILM
THEM HAVE THEM INSTALLED IN YOUR CARS FRONT AND
BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reply
o theNWOsucks says:
January 23, 2013 at 6:31 pm
1patroit
Remove the spaces, read, save, copy and distribute this booklet to others for it
shows you ways to fight the police state.
Here is the link below:
http: // anti – politics. net / distro / 2009 / warriorsecurity -read . pdf
Reply
7. partizanradio says:
January 23, 2013 at 10:16 am
The program was never discontinued. It was just renamed. The filthy feds have been
operating against us constantly for many many years. Federal “law enforcement” has NO
real authority. The county sheriffs are the highest lawmen in the nation PERIOD.
NEVER talk to a fed. They are scum of the earth.
Reply
o VikingRebirth says:
January 23, 2013 at 11:42 am
Amen. Uncle Sam is releaged to 20 enumerated powers:
1.Coin and regulate the value of money.
2.Administer the seat of government.
3.Tax.
4.Borrow.
5.Spend.
6.Punish crimes on the high seas.
7.Establish federal courts.
8.Pass copyright and patent laws.
9.Raise and finance armed forces.
10.Establish bankruptcy laws.
11.Establish rules for citizenship.
12.Call up state militias.
13.Administer federal lands.
14.Establish rules for the armed forces.
15.Establish a postal system.
16.Regulate commerce.
17.Standardize weights and measures.
18.Punish counterfeiting.
19.Declare war.
20.Pass laws to implement the above.
Reply
o theNWOsucks says:
January 23, 2013 at 6:32 pm
partizanradio
Remove the spaces, read, save, copy and distribute this booklet to others for it
shows you ways to fight the police state.
Here is the link below:
http: // anti – politics. net / distro / 2009 / warriorsecurity -read . pdf
Reply
8. Truth_Hurts says:
January 23, 2013 at 9:26 am
It’s pretty clear that the above mentioned Aaron Greene (as in Greenbaum), is working
for the FEDS.
Reply
9. Leonard Melton says:
January 23, 2013 at 9:12 am
Just judging from the troll traffic here and on several other web-sites I view and comment,
I would say that COINTELPRO is already here and alive and well.
Reply
o Sir Baby De Porky says:
January 23, 2013 at 9:24 am
Sssshhhhttt !!!
You’re spillin’ the beans !!!
Reply
 Leonard Melton says:
January 23, 2013 at 9:41 am
Oh, I know it … just can’t help it after years of watching some of the most
outrageous lies and dis-information thrown out by some of the more
obvious spin-doctors and liars.
Reply
http://www.infowars.com/the-return-of-cointelpro/